On the Rope

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the first stage of the Advent calendar my mom knitted for me. My intention was to create the weights out the yarn my mom used to knit the mittens, then hang it up the following year. That was my intention.

What really happened was that I took it to Memphis with me in a non-descript box during our summer visit. Because I was going to have a lot of time to work on it, then, right? Then I accidentally left it there. But I didn't realize it was missing until - you guessed it - it was time to at least throw those mittens in a bag again. By then, my sister had moved home and was living in the room where I had left the box. Everything in the room had been shoved in corners and stacked in other places. And, did I mention it was in a non-descript box?

Finally, the mittens were discovered and recovered! This past summer I added the weights, which are styrofoam balls wrapped in the various yarns used to make the mittens, and we finally got those babies up on the rope. Lee and I had a lot of fun hanging up the calendar. (There were some bursts of over-controlling mom ruining the moment; I plan to do better with that next year.) Despite the horrible, flash-less pictures, it looked really cute, though there is still some tweaking I want to do for next year.

Next steps for this treasure:

1. Finish writing the "script" we will use. (I found one that I thought was really cool until we started, so I am writing my own, using this one as a model.)

2. Gather all of the "treats" for the mittens to store with them. (Of course, chocolate is included every day, but I will buy that fresh.)

3. Determine a permanent order for the mittens and sew the numbers on. (1-25, in case that is not readily apparent.)

4. Re-assess some of those balls, and make new, smaller ones. (My yarn wrapping skills turned out to be nil, so some of those weights ended up being huge.)